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MILK AND MILK PRODUCTS
Not everyone agrees that milk and milk products should be part of the human diet after infancy. While human milk is designed by nature as the perfect food for human babies, the argument has been made that just as no other species drink milk after weaning, neither should we.
Many adults have difficulty digesting pasteurized milk. Many others develop chronic allergies from using milk products. While this lends credence to arguments against milk, such physiological reactions are usually due to the poor quality of conventionally produced milk and milk products. While for some individuals genetic influences play a role, for most the body’s reaction to milk depends largely upon the quality and state of the particular milk used.
MILK’S ROLE IN MANKIND’S EVOLUTION
Domesticated animals are generally thought to have first been used to produce milk eight to ten thousand years ago, though some archaeological evidence in recent years indicates that some humans may have secured milk from animals as long as thirty thousand years ago; until then, the only milk humans used was from the mother’s breast. This proved adequate through millions of years of evolution. While humans, once weaned, could no doubt live in health without milk today, quality grass-fed raw milk is generally an outstanding addition to a healthy primal diet. Indeed, milk gave a considerable evolutionary advantage to those of our ancestors who were able to digest it beyond infancy.
The Swiss of the Loetschental Valley were among the few native groups Weston Price studied who used milk products (the others were certain African tribes, including the Masai). The native Swiss group used raw, whole milk (both fresh and cultured), cheese, and butter, all in substantial quantities. Milk was from healthy, grass-fed animals and was used unpasteurized and unhomogenized. Such foods clearly can play a major role in a health-enhancing program for the individual who is genetically enabled to utilize these foods well.
As beneficial as high-quality dairy products may be to the human diet, we could attain optimal health without them. Dr. Weston Price discovered groups who consumed no dairy food but had complete resistance to dental decay and chronic disease. Their diets invariably included other rich sources of calcium and other minerals. The soft ends of long bones were commonly chewed, and the shafts and other bones were used in soups. Bones of small animals were ground up and added to food.
Modern medicine is discovering the importance of a substantial intake of calcium. For example, several recent studies have linked high blood pressure and other problems with chronic subclinical calcium deficiency. Paradoxically, other problems are associated with high consumption of conventionally produced dairy foods. This has not gone unnoticed by researchers, nutritionists, and physicians. The importance of the quality and freshness of milk products lies behind the paradox. This concept has not been considered in attempts by the medical community to explain the health effects of dairy foods.
Milk from domesticated animals became important as a human food several thousand years ago. With domestication and settlement, fewer wild animals were available, and as groups of people roamed less, they hunted less, and ate more grains and vegetables. Milk replaced animal bones as the chief source of calcium and some other minerals. Adaptations in evolution are always the effects of particular causes. Humans developing the ability to digest milk into adulthood possessed a survival advantage; such change is the basis of evolution.
TODAY’S PROCESSED DAIRY PRODUCTS
Conventional dairy products of today are capable of doing much harm to the human body. However, they are considered healthy foods, and most people consume them habitually, finding it difficult to give them up. Be this as it may, many people today often experience symptoms of fatigue, nasal congestion, colds, and allergy as a direct result of consuming dairy products. These symptoms disappear rapidly when dairy consumption is reduced or eliminated. Other symptoms are subtly and indirectly related to these foods, and a host of other chronic problems developing over the years are greatly influenced by them.
For the full story on conventional versus traditional, primal grass-fed dairy foods, please see my book The Untold Story of Milk. Let’s now examine a few salient and pertinent facts about homogenization, synthetic vitamin D, and pasteurization. Following that, we will discuss raw dairy products and the best way to begin incorporating them into the diet.
Homogenization
Homogenization breaks down fat globules in milk, causing them to remain dispersed. This is done so the cream in milk will not rise to the top. Homogenization on a commercial scale was introduced over a period of years in the 1930s so that large volumes of milk could be shipped in trucks without the milk churning into butter, (which naturally happened without homogenization). Consumers resisted the new homogenized product because they were used to judging the quality of milk by the amount and color of the cream at the top of a milk bottle. More cream and deeper yellow color meant more fat and flavor and vitamins A and D, all of which were known to be good. It took many years of indoctrination of the public via advertising dollars to dispel this truth from people’s minds and replace it with whatever it is that makes many people today accept the white liquid in markets that passes for milk.
Homogenization produces a substance in homogenized milk that damages arterial walls, according to a controversial theory of Kurt Oster, M.D., former chief of cardiology at Park City Hospital in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Oster wrote extensively about this. His thesis was that the enzyme xanthine oxidase (XO), found in milk fat, is normally not absorbed into the bloodstream from the intestines when unhomogenized milk is drunk. The homogenization process emulsifies fats in milk, releasing the XO and making it available for absorption. Individuals using homogenized milk have high levels of XO in the blood, while those using only unhomogenized milk, skim milk, or no milk have very low levels. The theory is that XO acts chemically to scar arterial walls, with a subsequent deposition of fatty material on the scars contributing to the development of atherosclerosis. Oster and many other physicians, including Dr. Kurt Esselbacher, chairman of the Department of Medicine of the Harvard Medical School (at the time that he publicly expressed his full support of Oster’s overall concept), believe homogenized milk is a major cause of heart disease in the United States.
Mary Enig, Ph.D., a renowned expert in the biochemistry of fats and oils and their effects in the human body, and many other experts disputed Oster’s theory, saying that his chemical explanation did not make sense. The theory never gained widespread acceptance.
Homogenization occurred at the same time as widespread pasteurization was mandated—the subsequent rise in heart disease would be attributed to both processes.
The Past Use of Synthetic Vitamin D 2 —Irradiated Ergosterol
Vitamin D2 (irradiated ergosterol) was for many years added to most commercial dairy products and many other processed foods; it was also commonly used in multivitamins. Years ago, when cows spent most of the year outdoors eating grass, cows made natural vitamin D. Carotenes that the cows consumed gave butter, particularly summer-made butter, a naturally bright-yellow color. Such butter, however, did not store and ship as well as a lower-vitamin, paler butter. Over the years the quality and vitamin content of butter dropped as the color faded—as cows came to spend less time outdoors eating grass and more time indoors eating grains. Eventually, yellow dye was added to most butters.
Vitamin D is a complex of several vitamins existing in certain animal fats. There are over 800 isomers of vitamin D. One such isomer of the complex, vitamin D3, is produced by the action of sunlight on skin. Irradiated ergosterol is a synthesized approximation of vitamin D3, with a slightly different biochemical structure than its natural counterpart. Studies have shown that this D2 is more active than vitamin D3 and overstimulates calcium metabolism. Clinical experience with arthritis patients and others with problems involving calcium utilization indicate that vitamin D2, whether in milk, other foods, or vitamins, contributed to health problems, especially calcification of the soft tissues. As a result, it is no longer as widely used as it once was. Failure to include adequate sources in the diet of natural vitamin D, and the fat-soluble nutrients vitamin A and vitamin K2 that are associated with it in nature, further contributes to problems with calcium utilization.
In the 1930s, several studies linked irradiated ergosterol with calcification of the placenta and other problems in pregnancy. Results published in medical journals caused some concern at the time, but these warnings and those of Weston Price and others about the dangers of synthetic vitamin D2 went largely unheeded.
Grossly abnormal calcium metabolism led to the death of at least one infant in England, when for a short time the amount of irradiated ergosterol added to milk was increased from 400 I.U. (international units) to 1,000 I.U. per quart. The infant dying from this highly unusual abnormality was the first reported death due to “idiopathic hypercalcemia of infancy” (high levels of serum calcium due to an unknown reason). The addition of irradiated ergosterol to milk in England was subsequently stopped.
Pasteurization
Pasteurization is done for both sanitary and commercial reasons. Pasteurization usually kills most pathogens—which thrive in conventional dairies—rendering raw milk free of them. The milk is usually shipped long distances in tanker trucks and packaged for sale or made into various milk products on a commercial scale. The modern dairy industry is huge and would not be possible without the processes of pasteurization and homogenization.
Pasteurization denatures all enzymes and heat-labile nutrients, changing the chemical structures of proteins and fats in the milk. As small farmers were forced off their farms and into cities by the commercial realities of post–World War II modern farming, raw milk gradually began disappearing from the American scene. Many health issues became much more prevalent. Heat-processed milk, cheese, and yogurt create allergies in consumers, though the symptoms may not be recognized as allergies. Reactions to pollens, molds, dust, and other environmental substances are usually linked to these and other dietary influences. Modern confinement cows are routinely fed antibiotics and soy feed grown, usually GMO, with pesticides. They are subjected to insecticides, drugs, and other chemicals. These substances may appear in their milk.
Commercial interests dictating food production have joined with regulatory authorities to make raw milk difficult to obtain in many parts of the country. Scare tactics have been used to convince the public that all raw milk is dangerous. Pasteurization and homogenization enables quantities of milk to be collected, shipped long distances, and stored. This is impossible with raw milk, which traditionally has often been made into soured milk products. Thus raw milk has always been locally produced.
Concern for consumers’ health appears in milk advertisements, but the production of food is a business, whether the food is milk, meat, cereals, vegetables, fruits, or candy bars. Profits are placed before concerns about consumers’ health. As a result, modern milk is not fit for consumption. Raw milk from grass-fed, chemical-free animals is truly an entirely different, highly desirable primal food.
In indigenous cultures where adults consume milk, often the product is cultured or clabbered milk. Both are similar to homemade raw yogurt, and are partially predigested—much of the lactose (milk sugar) has been broken down by bacterial action. This process must be accomplished over a period of several hours in the stomach when one drinks fresh milk; yogurt or clabbered milk is much more easily and quickly digested than fresh milk.
Many people with a history of allergic reactions to milk, even raw milk, can use and enjoy cultured raw milk. Similarly, though pasteurized cheeses may cause problems, small amounts of raw-milk cheeses often do not. Considerable individual differences exist; some people are much more adapted for these foods than others. Milk products from pasture-fed animals almost never cause allergic reactions and are superior to those from animals fed mostly grains.
RAW DAIRY FOODS
Sometimes change must necessarily proceed rather slowly in early stages of dietary adjustments. Food preferences result from a lifetime of likes and dislikes, habits, and culturally ingrained responses to foods available in different situations; though much needed, change may come with difficulty. This is all true when one is considering the elimination of conventional dairy products in one’s diet and the introduction of raw-milk products instead. The following guidelines for the use of dairy products are suggested:
Raw goat’s-milk and sheep’s-milk cheeses may also be excellent. Compared to cow’s milk, goat’s milk is more similar biochemically to human’s milk. Sheep’s-milk and goat’s-milk cheeses are sometimes produced organically, and these ruminants naturally feed on grasses, weeds, and shrubs. (Use the Weston A. Price Foundation Shopping Guide in selecting quality cheeses: www.westonaprice.org/about-the-foundation/shopping-guide.)
Many cheeses labeled “raw” are heated to 150 degrees Fahrenheit; however, raw-milk cheese should not have been heated to over 105 degrees Fahrenheit. Natural cheeses are not ground, melted, or mixed with anti-mold chemicals, preservatives, and a variety of food additives, as are most conventionally produced cheeses. An organic cheese is made from milk from organically fed animals, though not necessarily pasture-fed, and should be free of pesticide residues; some producers order laboratory tests periodically to ensure this is the case. Raw-milk cheeses are required by law to be aged for at least sixty days. Since this reduces the risk of harmful microorganisms in the cheese, aged raw-milk cheeses may be sold even in states where raw milk may not legally be sold for human consumption.
Availability and Safety of Raw-Milk Products
The availability of these raw-milk products varies from region to region because of restrictive laws; many states prevent the sale of raw milk and most forbid the sale of raw butter for human use. Laws prohibiting the sale of these foods hide under the cloak of public safety but are actually the result of lobbying by the dairy industry to protect commercial interests. Raw milk of a quality suitable for market cannot be mass-produced on huge farms by cows that are little more than milk machines, living far from the land that nature intended grazing animals to feed upon. Raw milk cannot be shipped in tanker trucks, processed in plants, and distributed in supermarkets far from where it is produced, as can commercial milk. Nor will raw milk keep for weeks on a shelf.
Raw milk from healthy animals is outstanding food for many people, particularly for growing children. In states where raw milk is inspected and tested by government agencies, this may help assure that animals are healthy and milk is produced under sanitary conditions (although too often regulations are used by authorities to harass and attempt to drive out of business farmers producing and selling top-quality, grass-fed raw milk). State government regulations and enforcement are stringent about the production of raw milk, which is allowed bacteria counts only a fraction of those allowed in milk to be pasteurized. Such raw milk is safer than conventionally produced milk, for any problem in the pasteurization process—they occasionally occur—leads to contaminated milk.
The Superiority of Raw Milk
Studies by eminent physicians and scientists, including Francis Pottenger, Jr., have clearly demonstrated the superiority of raw milk as compared with pasteurized. Raw milk contains vital heat-labile nutrients not found in pasteurized milk. The medical establishment and public health authorities have failed to recognize evidence that a deficiency of these nutrients has substantially contributed to the development of the epidemic of diseases plaguing modern civilization.
Poorly produced raw milk can lead to disease, particularly in susceptible individuals. But many state health agencies, under political pressure from the dairy industry, have simply categorically prohibited the sale of raw milk and raw butter, claiming all such products are dangerous to the public. This is not true; the history of raw milk in this country shows raw milk and raw-milk products are not dangerous or harmful when these foods are conscientiously produced. The public has been robbed of the right to good food, and the industry and government agencies responsible have convinced us they are the protectors of public health. The dairy industry meanwhile counts profits (much of which comes from government subsidies, that is, our taxes) as national health deteriorates.
Food is big business. The interest groups profiting from the food business have deliberately made it difficult to eat simply and naturally; traditionally produced milk, cheese, and butter can be hard to find. Only if we support the few dairy farmers producing natural products of the highest quality will this change. Like organic vegetable farmers (discussed in the next chapter), organic dairy farmers remain a minority. But good quality raw-milk cheeses are available in many stores, and many states allow sales of raw milk and a few of raw butter. By educating legislators and demanding the highest-quality foods for ourselves and our children, more and more states will follow the lead of those with laws allowing the sale of raw milk and raw-milk products; demand in California is such that these foods are available in many supermarkets.
The adulteration of milk has made a liability out of this delicious traditional, primal food. Professionals in the fields of medicine and nutrition are evenly split between the pros and cons of drinking conventional milk; resulting confusion makes it difficult for the lay person to choose foods wisely and is cause for concern in light of the problems to which adulterated milk contributes. Sadly, the public cannot win; avoiding conventional milk and milk products may contribute to calcium deficiency, while using them contributes to the problems detailed in this chapter.
The use of other calcium-rich foods, such as green salads and green vegetables, and food supplements such as calcium hydroxyapatite derived from the bones of grass-fed animals, or both—by those avoiding milk and milk products—is one viable alternative. Another is the use of whole, grass-fed raw milk, and butter and cheese made from raw milk, where available, and butter, yogurt, cream, cheese, and kefir made from pasteurized grass-fed milk. Ideally both sources are used. The raw versions of these dairy foods are best, but when those are not available, the pasteurized versions may be integrated into a modern primal diet.